According to Google Trends, but also according to Distrowatch, our own statistics here at OSNews and overall sense of the industry during 2006, Ubuntu has a big leap in mind share ahead of its competition (please note that we don't dare to say "market share", although we are pretty confident that it's the most used Linux desktop out there today). The second Fedora has a very small edge ahead of SuSe (while in US is a clear second), while Debian is following fourth. Mandrake+Mandriva (add both names on Google Trends and then sum the results) is clearly way below the previous four distros, but a clear 5th nonetheless. Last year Ubuntu was only a bit ahead of the other distros worldwide, but 2006 seems to have skyrocketed the distribution in the people's minds and computers.

I have found that 70% of the people that try to install Windows 98 can't do it if they start with a new hard drive. Xp is better, if it is the only system on the drive.

Most of the people I know who try to install any OS for the first time don't have the skills to do so.
Most of the computer users that I am around (an office of about 50 users) don't know what a primary partition is much less an extended one.

I usually have to walk everyone through an install, be it Windows, Slackware, Freebsd, or Ubuntu.

And please don't refer to Slackware as "hackerish".
My install is a fine-tuned well-oiled masterpiece of Individuality.